A collection of humorous, touching, and always thought provoking articles from various sources.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

90 on Your Telephone

I received a
telephone call last evening from an individual identifyinghimself as an AT&T Service Technician
(could also be Telus) who wasconducting
a test on the telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test I should
touch nine (9), zero (0), the pound sign (#), and then hang up. Luckily, I was
suspicious and refused.

Upon contacting
the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you give the
requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which enables them to
place long distance calls billed to your home phone number. I was further
informed that this scam has been originating from many local jails/prisons.

Snopes.com:This item is another example of a scam
warning that has been continuously circulating via the Internet for the better
part of a decade, thereby receiving vastly more publicity than it warrants.
Although the warning has some kernel of truth to it, only a very small,
specialized portion of the phone-using public is vulnerable to the scam
described therein.

This scam does
not affect residential or cell phone customers — it only applies to businesses,
hospitals, government agencies, and other organizations that still use
telephone private branch exchanges (PBXs) rather than Centrex lines to handle
their calls. On certain PBX systems (i.e., ones for which pressing '9' is the
signal to obtain an outside line, and there are no restrictions placed on
outgoing calls), a scammer could gain access to place expensive, long-distance
phone calls by tricking an employee into initiating the #-9-0 sequence. Outside
of a few other settings where one might have to press '9' to obtain an outside
line (such as hotels), the likely result of pressing #-9-0 will simply be a
fast busy signal.